2025 Black Crows Octo Birdie

Brand new for the 2025 season, Black Crows introduces the Octo Birdie. This is a particularly exciting addition as it takes notes from the highly successful Mirus Cor and spices up the former Vertis, resulting in a high-performance carving ski with flair. Categorized as “all terrain”, Black Crows wanted to offer a different piste-side experience, one that involved dynamic carving capabilities with a less serious, more enjoyable spin on it. Rather than focus solely on aggressive carvers, they wanted to invite some fun into it and appeal to a wider audience of skiers. With a unique shape, solid build, and notable attributes, the Octo Birdie is sure to gain a fan base.

Utilizing the trademark Black Crows simple construction, we’re getting a poplar wood core and fiberglass laminates for the foundation. With semi cap construction and full sidewalls all around the ski, this is where the level of on-piste performance comes into play. Delivering great edge grip and stability underfoot, the minimalist build keeps the weight down and at 1525 grams in the 167.2 cm length, it generates an impressive amount of power given how light it is. We see inspiration from the Mirus Cor with the slight swallowtail featuring an aluminum insert. This had a lot of success in the Mirus Cor and does a great job of putting more pressure on the back of the ski. Without locking it into a turn, it instead provides energy and a bit of a boost into the next, putting it into a different category than a lot of other dedicated carving skis. Light and incredibly agile, it transfers from edge to edge with serious quickness, which means you don’t want to crank up the speed dial too much. That said, it handles on-piste terrain with strength and power while allowing for lively quickness.

Onto the shape, we get the makings of a pretty traditional carving ski but with some modern tweaks. At 84 mm underfoot, it is not the narrowest ski for its intended use but that's what gives it such character. With 126 mm tips and 113 mm tails, it generates a 14-meter turn radius which is a nice short arc. Easy and quick to flick around, the taper that is incorporated into the tip and tail invites more versatility and ease when it comes to encountering varied snow conditions. The classic medium camber underfoot provides excellent ski-to-snow contact and given the rest of the build, it is super reactive and lightweight. Speaking to its more modern shape and resulting performance, Tester Alison Beckwith pointed out “first, the shaped tip put me off visually, and made my brain think I was skiing a shorter ski; it behaved like a shorter ski because it is so nimble! I was surprised it glided well in soft powder, it was remarkably floaty, but in heavier powder it didn't handle the chop well and I had to muscle the ski through. Carved in the troughs well though!” It’s great when a ski surprises you and this might be the case for this new Octo Birdie.

The new Octo Birdie is bound to shake things up in the Black Crows collection and beyond. Designed to allow a broader audience of skiers to access it, the level of performance combined with lightweight energy and maneuverability lands it in a truly unique spot. While there are more aggressive options in the all-mountain/carving category, the agile nature of the Octo Birdie gives it a friendly but plenty powerful appeal.